Internship

About the Internship

The escalating prevalence of opioid use among pregnant women has raised concerns regarding the neurodevelopmental outcomes in their infants born to this demographic. The overall goal is to evaluate fetal brain volume differences on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) between pregnant women using opioids and healthy controls, with the goal of early detection of opioid-associated developmental changes.

Gathering high-resolution whole brain volumes for fetuses in-vivo on fetal MRI is challenging due to fetal movement. In this study, 2-dimensional (2D) MR images of the fetal brain were acquired using a Half-Fourier Single-shot Turbo spin-Echo (HASTE) sequence in the axial, coronal, and sagittal planes. These images were acquired in 3 -5 mm thick slices. We had X 52 number of participating mothers pregnant women – Y 25 with opioid use and Z 27 controls.

Did You Know?

Prenatal opioid exposure can lead to smaller brain size, altered fetal physiology, and possible future risk for poor long-term neurobehavioral outcomes.

Workplace

Strengths

My strengths as a team member include a strong foundation in knowledge about the multiple views of the brain and neuroanatomy from the classes that I have taken as a Biology & Neuroscience student, and effective communication abilities every week to collaborate and problem-solve with my advisor and other team members.

Team Role

During the internship, my team role evolved significantly. Initially, I focused on brain masking and manual segmentation of fetal brain MRI using ITK-SNAP software. As the internship progressed, my responsibilities expanded to integrating the generated brain masks with the original fetal brain HASTE MRI images. In the latter part of the internship, I transitioned towards employing computational biology tools like MATLAB to examine these post-processed images and ensure their proper orientation to the correct plane.

Growing as a professional

I aspire to further enhance my ability to adapt to changing situations, get better at managing my time, and become an even more valuable and supportive teammate in order to contribute effectively to our team's success.

Contribution

My impact on this internship has proven valuable as I integrated brain masks with the original fetal brain HASTE MRI images, alongside their corresponding brain-masked versions, into an automated 3D reconstruction pipeline. This integration facilitated the conversion of these images into high-resolution 3D representations through the collaborative efforts of my colleagues. Without my involvement, the efficient production of these 3D images would not have been possible, hindering our ability to evaluate differences in fetal brain volumes on MRI scans of pregnant women using opioids compared to healthy control pregnant women.

Diverse Perspectives

Working with a diverse team has taught me the importance of embracing differences and leveraging them as strengths. The varied perspectives have played a crucial role in our team's success, promoting creativity, comprehensive problem-solving, and a more inclusive and effective work environment.

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